Happy Thanksgiving!

Yesterday I received several phonecalls and a whole bunch of text messages and emails from students wishing me a happy thanksgiving. They were all very concerned for me, being away from my friends and family on the big day. After half a day of this, I started telling them that one of the things I am thankful for is wonderful students. Their response? Well, we think we should take care of our foreign teacher. In class we talked about what they are thankful for, and while it's no surprise, it's nice to be reminded that around the world we are generally thankful for the same big things. And of course I told them all about how thankful I was for the elections 3 weeks ago, and for change. And for being here, now. And we all talked about how great parents are, and teachers. And siblings. And friends. And life.

On Saturday about 25 of us will be sitting down to a big potluck Thanksgiving dinner, Chinese friends and Peace Corps family.

I miss you guys, but I whipped up some pies that approximate the pumpkin pies you probably just ate... so [frankly speaking] I'm a happy camper.

wish you happy everyday

Last Thursday, several of my senior girls came over to teach me to make jiaozi, or dumplings. They're the kind of dumplings that in the States you'd call a pot-sticker. When you make them from scratch, it can take a long time! This is Iris, the head chef for the night, kneading the dough. The filling we made by chopping huge amounts of long-stemmed green leafy veggies (not sure of the English name, or if we even have this vegetable actually) and mixing in some chopped pork, egg, hot oil, and seasonings. Then the dough was expertly rolled out into little circles that were a little thicker in the middle, and we all gathered around the table with chopsticks to fill and shape the jiaozi. Here are several of my girls and at the right of the photo is David, a good friend of mine and a chinese english teacher here. I was taking the picture but never fear, mom, I learned how to make the jiaozi too. Mine may not have been pretty, but they didn't explode in the pot while they were cooking either. Here are most of the jiaozi laid out before being cooked. Yikes that's a lot! We fed 8 and still had still had some left over for my dinner the next day.



On Friday night at English corner, we had a Halloween party. I went as a cowgirl, and was pulled into a jig (wha?) as soon as I arrived. There were glow sticks and a lot of feathered masks. Apparently there'd been a fashion show at the beginning that I missed. We played a game that one of the English Association members had read somewhere was a traditional Halloween game: a ping-pong ball is set on top of a bowl filled with flour and a team stands on each side of the bowl. On the count of 1-2-3, both both teams blow and whichever team blows the ball onto the other team's side, wins. Well, they wanted me to judge, but that sounded like too much fun to miss, so I told them I'd prefer to play. Everyone wanted to be on my team and we definitely dominated, even if we were all covered with flour by the time it was over! Great night -- my only regret was that I had forgotten my camera! For tomorrow's English Corner they've asked me to prepare a lesson, so I don't think it'll be nearly as fun, though you never know.

On Saturday we went over to my boss, Rhona's, home. She's the head of the English dept. here at GongDa and is a really classy lady. She spent a year in Australia, and has spent time in Canada and the US as well and her English is great! She and her husband put out a breakfast spread for us at her home, and then they took us out for fish hotpot! mmmmm -- Some of you may remember my descriptions of hotpot from Chengdu. Here in Gansu they often do it a little differently. When we order fish hotpot, a big stew pot is brought out with a cooked fish and some veggies in the bottom, covered by a thick layer of peppers. They scoop the peppers off the top, and then everyone digs in with their chopsticks, pulling out what they want. When the fish (or shrimp!) is all eaten up, they come back and pour in either hot water or a broth, and add some more hot pepper oil. Once the whole mixture is at a good boil, you dip in any of the foods you've ordered (meats or veggies or quail's eggs, my favorite!) and hold them in the water til they're cooked. After pulling out what you want to eat, you dip the bite into a personal bowl of spices and oil, mixed to taste, before eating it. It makes for a special meal every time, and it's reallllly easy to stuff yourself! We didn't order anything particularly crazy to dip into the pot this time, but I'll keep you all updated as I keep expanding my food horizons.

After lunch we went to a tailor shop and I ordered a vest and pants, all made from down. For anyone who I haven't mentioned it to yet.... after giving exams at the beginning of January I'm going to Tibet!!! And it is going to be cold so I'll need all the warm layers that I can get.

After lunch and our adventures at the tailor's, we hightailed it home to meet some more of my seniors who came by to teach me to cook a few chinese dishes. It was a bit of a process actually getting the dishes all together for our meal, because I spent some time with Jean first, shopping and preparing and stir-frying, and then some of the other students showed up with their own ingredients and dishes to make. I baked some cinnamon rolls and cookies to add a Western tradition through dessert, something not part of Chinese eating habits. Though only five of us ended up eating, I had a full house as some students brought friends. It was a wonderful wonderful night --- here are all of us crowded around my tiny kitchen table (that's Pierce, my site mate, at the bottom right of the picture)! Busy weekend full of REALLY good eats.

The last two weeks have been fairly low-key in classes, with a lot of presentations on the part of the students so I can get a benchmark before final exams in January. I'm more than half way through my first semester teaching! Next week inspectors could pop in for observations at any time, BUT after that the evaluation will be over -- I think students and teachers alike will be relieved to have that pressure off.

I've spent a lot of time helping my seniors to edit their resumes and cover letters... I've seen at least 10 cover letters ripped almost directly from some mysterious source which is grammatically terrible not to mention a miserably composed pitch to a possible employer. Ripping those apart while trying to nurture students' confidence in their English abilities (on plaigerized job applications? ugh) was a fun task. I've also been getting tons of text messages and emails, particularly since a new English Corner started on tuesday nights at the main campus. Now I meet at least 40-50 new students each week, most of whom leave with my contact info squirreled away in their backpack. Nobody has abused any of my numbers yet, and I don't expect them to, but I have gotten a lot of messages like this: "Hello, a friend of mine introduces you to me. I hope we can make friends with eachother. I am a student of [in chinese, some engineering major]. Welcome to our school. Wish you happy everyday in China." I am often wished this. Of course, no name, just a hello and welcome! Often these anonymous messages come with an invitation for dinner or a chat as well, which is no problem as I can just show up looking around expectantly and wait for several anxious chinese students to flock towards me asking if I made it there okay and if I know how to use chopsticks. I don't often look forward to these meetings, but they almost always turn out to be a great time. Life is still good and I feel more and more settled here by the week.


Finally, Linds? YOU ROCK. Thank you for the package!!

TianShui + ChengXian

This weekend we went down to TianShui(Sky Water), a city about 4 hours by bus southeast of here, to meet up with the Rosses. Michelle and Thad's site is ChengXian, a small town another 2 hours past TianShui, but they'd come into the city to celebrate Thad's 30th. That area of Gansu is totally different than up here around Lanzhou. It is much wetter there, and all the greenery and trees were almost shocking when we first arrived! The views as we bused down were gorgeous. I had been napping early on, and when I awoke, felt like I'd passed through a picture into "real" China as we passed traditional earth homes around courtyards and backed by lush terraced hills.

Our bus, as we discovered right before it exited TianShui, was a thru-bus, and we hopped off just in the nick of time before it passed through the far set of tolls. We walked back towards town and grabbed a taxi, asking for the bus station... a nod and a grunt later and we were headed back into town. About 3 minutes down the road, the taxi driver asked us which bus station. Uhhhh, we'd like to go to Lanzhou, we hedged. 10 minutes later we were at the correct station, and after explaining to the bus hawkers, informed by the taxi driver that we were going to Lanzhou, that we were NOT in fact headed back to Lanzhou yet, Michelle and Thad came out and we were off. We spent the rest of a perfect sunny and warm day oggling the adorable kids attached by the wrist to ballons as big as they were, being oggled by everyone else in town, buying DVD's & cotton-candy, and generally strolling.

As it turned dusky, we grabbed the last four seats on the short bus to ChengXian. This involved the Rosses and I squeezing onto fold down aisle-seats and Ben sitting on a stool, in front of which was another stool, with a man who somehow edged backwards until by the end of the 2.5 hour ride, Ben had a handy spooning partner up there. Which was a good thing as the view out the front window must have been terrifying judging from the amount of swerving we were doing as we went up and over and around and down the mountains to ChengXian. I had my own special bus buddies farther back in the bus. Check out in particular the pincer effect going on from the guy behind me who occasionally tipped all the way forward and only woke up when his forehead ran into my back, and the guy on my left who never actually woke up no matter how many friendly shoves propped him upright for a moment here and there. Apparently my picture self finds it awkwardly-funny

In ChengXian we ate one of the local specialties called mashi (sp?) which both resembles and tastes like the creation of a chinese cook who maybe studied in Italy for a few years. It involved little pasta-ish shells, tofu chunks, potatos, veggies, and is delicious! CX is a really small town, and Thad and Michelle's students will achieve a teaching degree in three years and mostly head back to the villages that they come from to teach. Walking back into town the next morning we crossed a bridge over the town's distinctive river. Wide, but with many small channels running between reeds and mudbanks where a few kids played, women washed, old men fished, and a few hardy souls picked their way across.

The ride back to TianShui the next day was gorgeous! I got to see the homes and fields and mountains that I'd missed on the way in the night before. Every home was dressed for fall, covered in golden corn laid out to dry on every available surface, and strung with garlands of drying peppers. Wild cotton grew on the slopes by the road, with goats and cows munching away beside them, apparently unperturbed by their precariously steep positions. When we reached TianShui, the bus left us off in a part of town we didn't recognize, but after some mildly garbled conversations with the bus driver, he assigned another passenger who was heading to the bus station to take care of us, and we made it there and onto a big bus headed back to Lanzhou with little difficulty. Two and a half hours later the bus left us off on the highway outside of DingXi and we walked into town. A bus-some weekend, but it was wonderful to see a little more of Gansu in the fall, and great to hang out with the Rosses (happy 30th, Thad!!).